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In search of essential truth: footballers on Twitter

By John Basquill

Normally, the only time you hear a footballer speak is on TV, immediately after they’ve finished playing.  They stand in front of a board covered in sponsors’ logos and face two minutes of pointless questions, desperately trying to goad them into saying something controversial.  The answers are always the same, but in this setting you can forgive the bland, inane clichés – it’s hard enough for most people to express themselves eloquently after a 15 minute jog, never mind an hour and a half of professional football.

And even in these post-match interviews, the players are speaking in a setting they’ve been carefully prepared for.  All footballers are given years of media training before they’re unleashed in front of the cameras.  Unsurprisingly they’re told to handle the post-match interview situation by playing down individual achievements, talking up the importance of the team effort and, ultimately, revealing nothing that might be of any interest to rival teams or hostile journalists (or, in truth, any sentient human at all).

But the one part of the media football clubs can’t control is Twitter.  Clubs are often left exasperated by their players’ 140-character outbursts, jokes, arguments and general nonsense.  With every other part of the game so carefully shielded from the press and, even more so, the fans, Twitter is a force for truth, a noble beacon of light.

Crystal Palace midfielder Jason Puncheon was fined £15,000 for accusing a former manager, Neil Warnock, of corruption.  Puncheon claimed that Warnock was profiting from his own team selections by manipulating players’ contracts:

It’s impossible to ignore Joey Barton.  Barton, never far from controversy, became known for posting Nietzsche-inspired philosophy titbits on Twitter between matches. In 2012, before comparing himself to George Orwell, he made headlines for refusing to withdraw his criticism of John Terry, the then England captain who appeared in court accused of racially abusing an opponent.

And, in fact, Barton’s martyrdom almost did see him face charges, narrowly escaping prosecution for contempt of court.  He’s since dedicated himself to the noblest of Twitter causes: winding up Piers Morgan.

These brief insights into the obfuscated world of professional football are becoming more and more frequent.  They’re not always particularly coherent – Peter Odemwingie’s criticisms of West Bromwich Albion’s transfer policy were emotional but nonsensical – but they’re usually entertaining.

The ever-bemusing Mario Balotelli’s twitter output is always worth watching, as he veers between the controversial, the offensive, the amusing, and sometimes the downright bizarre.

Twitter, then, is like male pattern baldness, or rain.  It’s the great social leveller, the force that can’t be controlled by even the most rich or powerful.  And with professional football so clouded by clubs’ obsessive media management and lucrative corporate interests, we should be grateful for every glimpse into reality, every sliver of truth, that footballers on Twitter give us.

Leave PR to PR professionals!

By Violaine Desmons

As a PR professional who is experimenting the “2.0 trends” on a day-to-day basis, there’s not a single day that goes by without reading or hearing about new ways of doing my job. Indeed, my role has changed a lot since I started working in the PR industry ten years ago in terms of how we use the internet and social networks.  As such, we are quite often asked for advice on the best way to approach these channels, including whether bloggers should be a target, or if social networks should be used to liaise with journalists. 

This got me thinking about the “best practice” of PR and why it’s still of value today.  Regardless of which channels we use, the core principle of PR is still very much the same; a good story and the right timing, no more, no less. So why is PR still necessary today? Well, it’s because PR can provide a significant Return on Investment (ROI).  The beauty with the internet and social networking is that each interaction – such as the number of clicks through to a website – can be measured, allowing PR professionals to measure the success of a campaign.  But can it measure the true value of PR?

One big issue with using social networks is that since most companies use them, there are still many that choose to manage them independently, which isn’t always ideal.  For example, Daniel Kreiss, journalism professor at Chapel Hill University, North Carolina, conducted a recent survey on the use of Twitter during the last US electoral campaign, revealing that campaign managers are not always the best at digital.  As they need to check messages and information with a number of individuals before posting them, this represents a real issue in terms of messaging and reactivity.  It goes on to suggest digital should be left to the “digital guys”.

This is where the expertise of PR professionals comes into play.  For any company considering press relations, PR professionals will have the right tools in place to deliver the relevant, precise information over a company’s digital channels, such as Facebook and Twitter.  This information will align with the company’s core messaging, which will only continue to position the company as a thought leader in its industry.  This will essentially keep the company at the top of mind for anyone requiring the company’s services. 

The problem with this, however, is that payment fees cannot be directly linked to final results.  For example, a French journalists’ trade union recently warned about a judgment in favour of a company who didn’t pay the PR officer due to “insufficient results”. If only tangible results count, then PR people will be forced to use all methods to get their results, leaving deontology and professionalism at the door.  For companies, this will mean that they will be more likely to waste money rather than optimising a potential ROI!